


Cast My Death on Yesterday

by McSpot



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Hockey superstitions, M/M, idiots to lovers, the softest fic you'll ever read about hockey teeth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-02-13 18:14:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21498367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/McSpot/pseuds/McSpot
Summary: Mike has been in possession of Jeff's missing teeth since they were teammates in Philly.  Seeing as they haven't spoken for four years, he assumed that Jeff might want them back.Boy, was he fucking wrong.
Relationships: Jeff Carter/Mike Richards
Comments: 49
Kudos: 310





	Cast My Death on Yesterday

**Author's Note:**

> Once again this one entirely belongs to ashipwreckcoast for messaging me today and saying, "I just saw a photo of Jeff Carter with his toothless smile and thought, 'Mike Richards has Jeff’s missing teeth.'” That literally spawned this whole thing. I'm not even going to call it crack because 1) I'm pretty sure some hockey players do have each other's teeth and 2) this is totally canon.
> 
> Unedited, it's 1am, I will die before I edit.
> 
> Title is from "Born Losers" by Matthew Good because it came on when I was writing this and I put it on repeat for the rest of the fic because it's such a Carts/Richie song (and Richie in particular) that I'm amazed I didn't realize it before.

Mike hadn't really thought about it in years. They'd been sitting on his mantel since Mike had unofficially retired and moved back to Kenora full-time and that had been what, two, three years ago now? So they'd been sitting on his mantel for probably three years, and floating around in a box somewhere with other things he hadn't fully unpacked from LA for like a year prior to that.

He would have let it keep sitting on his mantel, unnoticed and kind of tucked behind the decorative wooden clock his parents had given him as a housewarming gift back when he'd bought the place, if his brother hadn't started chirping him about dusting.

"Dude, this place is like the fucking Addams family lives here," Mark had said, making a point of running his finger over the sideboard that Mike mostly forgot was part of his furniture. It hadn't really looked that bad, with its even coating of dust turning the whole thing a slightly duller shade of brown, until Mark drew a smiley face in it.

"You need to either hire a cleaning service or learn to fucking dust."

Mike had taken a bit of offense to that, because he liked to think he was doing a good job of taking care of his home. He cleaned the gutters and he vacuumed the rugs regularly and he had a schedule for changing out the sheets on his bed.

And there was always something that felt a little intrusive about hiring a cleaning service. He'd had them before, in Philly and in LA, because it was practical and because he hadn't had much interest in mopping or scrubbing toilets back then. It had been perfectly fine.

He wasn't sure what bothered him about them now. Maybe because Kenora was a small place and it was more like inviting a neighbor to clean your house and check out the filth you lived in, as opposed to an anonymous professional.

Maybe because Mike had gotten used to his self-image as an enigmatic local celebrity-turned-recluse, and he didn't much enjoy the idea of someone coming in and disturbing his routine.

Mike was home all the time. Surely he could incorporate dusting into his normal cleaning routine.

So he was giving dusting a try for once, thoroughly disgusted with himself for how much had actually accumulated because it was turning out to be a more involved job than he'd expected, when he rediscovered the bottle on his mantel.

It was one of those ubiquitous orange prescription bottles, and it rattled a little when Mike picked it up.

Except it didn't contain the antibiotics that the label touted, even if the items inside the bottle really did belong to the man whose name was on the label.

Mike hadn't exactly forgotten that he was in possession of Jeff Carter's missing teeth, but it also wasn't the sort of thing you thought about on a daily basis.

It was, objectively, a pretty fucking bizarre thing to try to explain to somebody outside of hockey. Outside of mothers preserving their child's first baby teeth, collecting somebody else's teeth was generally considered to be a mostly creepy thing to do. But Mike could think of no less than five guys he'd known in the NHL who had at least one tooth belonging to a teammate.

There were weirder superstitions than asking your buddy to keep your teeth safe, even if you didn't really need those teeth anymore seeing as they were, y'know, fucking smashed out of your mouth.

But Mike had been in ownership of Jeff's teeth since they were in Philly. It had been a pretty typical practice when Jeff had gotten his front teeth knocked out by a high-stick to the face from a teammate. Mouth wounds were always fucking bleeders, and so the trainers quickly pulled Jeff off the ice to shove gauze in his mouth and assess the damage. Mike remembered standing there on the ice, looking at Jeff's stick and the blood splattered across stark white and noticing a few little white lumps in the red.

He hadn't thought twice about collecting up Jeff's bloody, broken teeth and bringing them to him after practice. It was automatic to grab Jeff's hand in his own and tilt it up, gently tip the teeth into his cupped palm and curl his fingers closed around them.

"Got these for you," he'd said.

When he'd looked up, Jeff met his gaze, and Mike could have sworn something passed between them, the type of understanding that was far more solemn than their usual boozy commiseration.

He wasn't even surprised a few days later when Jeff thrust the prescription bottle at him, containing teeth that were far cleaner than when Mike had last seen them.

"You keep them," Jeff had said, giving Mike what he could only call a Look. And Mike had nodded, because it was Jeff, and he would do anything for Jeff.

He'd carried that bottle of teeth with him across the country over the years after that, usually sitting on a shelf or the corner of a counter, somewhere it wasn't likely to get knocked over or disturbed. And every time Jeff saw it, he'd smile a little bit and nod in satisfaction, like Mike was doing well.

When Mike got teeth of his own knocked out, he didn't really think much about returning the favor.

Seeing the way Jeff held the little container of teeth like it was something precious, like it was something to guard with his life, Mike had figured that he'd made the right decision.

The way Jeff had hugged him after was maybe a little more than just reaffirming their friendship, but they didn't talk about it in the same way that they didn't talk about a lot of things. They didn't have to talk about it, or maybe they just thought they'd have time to talk about it later.

They always had time to talk about it later, until later came and went without telling them and then it was too late.

Jeff and Mike's friendship didn't fall apart so much as it Stopped, in the same way that Mike's whole life Stopped in 2015. Hockey stopped, the LA Kings stopped, and Mike's friendship with Jeff stopped.

It had seemed unfathomable, that something so solid that it had been strong enough to pull them back together from opposite sides of the country could be destroyed so easily.

But maybe it had been rotting for a long time, or maybe they'd bought too much into their personal fable.

When Mike finally unpacked LA – after Washington was over, because for a few months he'd been able to pretend that hockey hadn't Stopped until he couldn't pretend anymore – he found a box of belongings with two bottles of teeth in it.

One had Jeff's name on it.

The other had Mike's.

He remembered looking at them for a long time, holding them in his hands and thinking about the ramifications of each until his vision shifted and he thought of all the other prescription bottles he'd held in his hands.

Jeff's teeth were placed on his mantel, nudged behind the clock where he knew they'd be safe, where he wouldn't have to look at them every day.

His own were placed in the garbage can.

He didn't know anybody who'd want them anyways.

Life went on, and Mike had a couple of years to get used to his new normal. By the time he looked at those teeth again, he'd developed a healthy detachment to his life Before.

_Does it bring you joy?_ That was what that lady everyone loved on Netflix always asked.

A bottle of his former teammate's old teeth? Mike didn't really feel any sort of way about that anymore.

But maybe Jeff might want them back? Maybe they were sentimental.

Or perhaps he'd have somebody new that he'd want to entrust them to.

Mike didn't give it much thought to put the bottle in a padded envelope and send it off to LA. He hoped Jeff still had the same address, or the new owner was going to be pretty freaked out when he opened that up.

Once the package was dropped at the post office it dropped out of his mind. It was still summer, and Mike had months of fishing out on the lake until it got too cold to take the boat out.

...and then he'd just walk out on the lake and fish that way.

He wasn't expecting to find Jeff Carter standing on his porch a few days later. Quite frankly he wasn't expecting to ever see Jeff Carter again at all.

They didn't exactly run in the same circles anymore.

He was even more surprised to have a familiar pill bottle whipped at his chest. It was mildly impressive that he managed to catch it when it bounced off, before it hit the ground.

Mike didn't do a lot of exercises to test his reaction time anymore, after all.

"Canada Post works fast," he said, because it was as good a conversation starter as any.

Jeff just stood there, eyes wide and fists clenched, chest heaving and teeth bared like a snarling animal – a full set of teeth.

"Bridges looking good." Mike gestured with the bottle at Jeff's wordless snarl; the teeth rattled the way that they always did.

"What the fuck is this?" When Jeff exploded, it wasn't quite as...explosive, as maybe Jeff had hoped it would be.

He sounded pissed, for sure. But Mike had liked to think that for a time, he had known Jeff pretty well. Back then, he'd have said he knew Jeff better than anyone else in the world.

Mike had no illusions that any of that still held true. It didn't even hold true for his last year in LA.

But if any of Mike's years of wrangling Jeff Carter had meant anything, Jeff was sounding kind of fucking hurt right now.

"It's your teeth, bud," Mike said, because bluntly neutral had been a good course of action for him the past few years, most of all with himself.

Jeff huffed through his nose, an infuriated bull deciding if he wanted to charge.

Mike stood there, because what else could he do? If he got hit, it definitely wouldn't be his worst interaction with Jeff Carter.

No interaction was probably worse than this. Mike had experienced plenty of that even before everything Stopped.

"I know it's my fucking teeth!" Jeff seethed, and he was fucking livid, face getting red, teeth still gritted. "I want to know why the fuck I got them in the fucking mail!"

Mike considered his response for a good moment, trying to consider what Jeff's motivation was here, watching for what land mines he may want to avoid.

He came up with jack squat, because he had no clue why Jeff was there, and so he chose honesty.

"I was cleaning and I found them again. I figured you might be kind of attached to them, or want to give them to someone else, so I sent them back. They're yours, I wasn't going to throw them out on you."

The noise Jeff made was almost more animal than his expression, this wounded sound like just the thought of the teeth being thrown out was gutting him.

"Why the fuck did you move them at all? I gave them to you, that means I want you to fucking have them! Who the fuck sends a guy's teeth back in the mail?"

Now Mike felt comfortable making his own disbelieving face, because he was pretty sure he was in the right. "Uh, a guy who hasn't spoken to the owner of those teeth in four years? It doesn't really make sense for me to be keeping them. It's not like I'm a part of your life anymore."

There was no reason for Jeff to rear back like he'd been slapped. Mike had seen him take many a punch to the chin without nearly so much drama as this.

It wasn't like anything Mike said wasn't public knowledge. There were news articles written on the dissolution of their friendship.

Maybe Jeff hadn't read them.

"That – that doesn't mean you send my fucking teeth back! That's not just a fucking buddies thing, that's – you don't give your teeth to just fucking anybody, they're not fucking trading cards!"

"Fucking not, eh?"

Okay, it really said something that Jeff didn't punch him after that one.

"This isn't a fucking joke! I gave you my teeth, I _trusted_ you with them, and you just – sent them back! Like you didn't want them! Like they're fucking trash to you!"

His eyes were wild and bright, fierce in a way Mike hadn't seen in years. He'd thought maybe the television cameras just did a bad job of capturing it, but maybe nobody had riled Jeff up like this in a long time.

Jeff did amazing things when he got like this, passionate and furious, liable to burn you if you tried to hold on for too long. He won Cups and gold medals and entire nations.

Once upon a time, Mike had been the only one who could get close without getting singed.

Now, he had to avert his eyes so he wasn't blinded.

"I don't see where you get off being so upset," Mike said, focusing on Jeff's collarbone. "It's not like you didn't give me back mine."

Jeff looking at him like he was insane, that part was familiar. Mike remembered a lot of that from the last year in LA.

"The fuck are you talking about? Of course I didn't do that, I'd never do that!"

Then it was Mike's turn to eye him up like he was crazy – which, between the two of them, Jeff was definitely the fucking insane one here.

"Uh, yeah, you did. They were in a box of my shit that you dumped at my place, all the stuff I'd left at your house. You collected up anything connected to me and shoved it in a box and left it on my front porch instead of just fucking giving it to me like a fucking adult, and my teeth were in there."

He expected Jeff to get defensive, but he wasn't expecting him to be delusional.

"Uh, no, I didn't."

"Uh, yeah, you did."

Jeff crossed his arms over his chest, pulling his grey t-shirt tight over his shoulders. Even midsummer, his conditioning was perfect – nothing like their drunken party summers at Sea Isle.

"Okay, show them to me," Jeff said.

Mike stared. "Show you what?"

"The teeth!" Jeff looked smug now. "If you're so sure I sent them to you, then go get them."

Mike snorted and shook his head. "Dude, I threw those out years ago."

He knew he wasn't the best at predicting Jeff anymore – the past ten minutes more than proved that – but nothing could have prepared them for how Jeff reacted then.

Jeff looked like he wanted to yell, but the anger just slid off his face, dripping away like melted ice and leaving horror in its wake.

"You...what?" His voice was dry, strained, like it was all he could do to keep his composure.

Mike was the one to cross his arms now, raising an eyebrow. "Dude, I threw them in the garbage. Like, three years ago. You didn't want them, and I didn't, and sure as fuck nobody else would, so."

He shrugged.

Jeff dissolved just a little bit more.

"No. No. You wouldn't..." He shook his head, slow at first and then faster, like he was flinging off the very thought of it. When he looked back at Mike, that fire in his eyes had hardened into steel.

"I've got them at home. I'm sure of it. I'll find them, I'll prove it to you."

He took two steps away, in the direction of the rental car parked in Mike's driveway.

"Uh...you flew all the way here for this?" Mike couldn't help how incredulous his voice got. "You sure you don't want to like...come in?"

He didn't really know if he wanted Jeff in his house right now, up in his space in a way that Jeff had made it clear he absolutely did not want a few years ago. But it felt rude not to offer, when Jeff had apparently flown all the way from LA just for...whatever this was.

His fucking teeth, apparently.

Jeff looked over his shoulder and eyed him for a long moment, unreadable in a way he never used to be. It should have been disturbing, not to be able to know Jeff at a glance, but maybe Mike had made his peace with that, with Not Knowing Jeff anymore. He hadn't really had a choice, now had he?

"No." Jeff shook his head again, just once this time, firm, decisive. "No. I'm gonna go home and find your teeth, and I'm gonna fucking prove it to you that I still have them, because I wouldn't get rid of you like that."

The irony was so obvious and blatant that Mike almost couldn't bring himself to point it out.

Almost.

"You did a pretty good job of getting rid of me in just about every other way. I don't see why this would be any different."

It said something, that Jeff didn't argue, didn't even try to fight him. His eyes were so solemn as he stared Mike down.

"I did," he said, subdued this time. "But I would never get rid of your teeth."

And then he pointed at the pill bottle, forgotten in Mike's hand.

"You fucking hold onto that, and don't you ever try to give it back to me, you understand?"

Back in the day, Mike wouldn't have questioned him, because it probably would have made sense. But they weren't who they were, back in the day.

"Don't you have someone you'd rather have keep these? Like, I don't know, a girlfriend? ...a wife?"

Jeff actually flashed a smile then, like Mike's question was adorably stupid. "You don't give your teeth to a lady, Mike, Jesus Christ."

"Then why'd you give them to me?"

Jeff shrugged, but his expression sobered. "You're Mike. Of course I gave them to you."

He left then, trudging off back to his car with the type of purposeful swagger that Mike only remembered seeing after a few too many drinks or a few too many wins.

"I've got your teeth!" Jeff called, right before getting in the car. "I'm gonna prove it!"

With that he shut the door, started the car, and peeled out of the driveway.

Mike hadn't used drugs in years, but he still stared at the place where Jeff had been for a good couple of minutes, trying to determine if he'd hallucinated the whole thing.

He went inside and had a nap. Maybe when he woke up the world would make sense again and Jeff Carter would forget all about his former best friend.

When he woke up, the bottle of teeth was sitting on his nightstand.

Not a dream, then.

Mike didn't hear anything from Jeff for a day, not that he really expected to. Actually, he expected Jeff would get back to LA, realize the insanity of his ways, and go back to never speaking to Mike again.

The teeth were returned to Mike's mantel, but next to the clock this time. Mike didn't know why, but he felt it was necessary to prove that he hadn't thrown them out, that he'd left them out just so everyone could see that Mike Richards had kept Jeff Carter's teeth, just as had been demanded of him.

He wasn't expecting the call on FaceTime, but he also hadn't really been sure that Jeff still had his number.

The call had barely connected before Jeff was wailing, "I can't find them!"

It said something that it only took Mike a moment to catch on. "You mean my teeth?"

He flinched at Jeff's miserable noise. His eyes were red and he looked like he'd been crying. It was more than a little too much, especially when they were talking about Mike's old teeth.

"I swear I didn't mean it! I must have – I was really fucked up over the whole thing, the buyout, and that whole season, and when I threw everything together – you know what I'm like to live with, I misplace shit all the time but like I know I still _have_ it, y'know? And so I was just walking around grabbing up whatever I saw and it must have somehow ended up getting thrown in that box – I swear I didn't know, I was so sure I still had them, and maybe it's bad that I haven't looked for them in a few years but I didn't need to see them every day, it was just comforting to know I still _had_ them-"

"My teeth. We're still talking about my old teeth, right?"

Mike didn't have a fucking clue what they were talking about. He'd never seen Jeff like this, not when he was drunk or strung out, not when he was delirious with a win or miserable with a loss or anxious for a game – Jeff didn't _get_ like this, frantic and rambling and those damn hangdog eyes begging for forgiveness.

If losing a Cup hadn't made him feel that way, Mike couldn't imagine why losing his old teeth would do it.

"I'm so sorry, Mike. It was so irresponsible of me, and I'm so sorry I made you think I didn't want them, or that I'd – want you to throw them out."

He spoke like the words were rocks in his throat, rough and painful – like he thought it would be painful for _Mike_.

Mike was rapidly getting the impression that maybe this whole teeth thing had meant a hell of a lot more to Jeff than he'd ever realized. Certainly more than it had meant to Mike, not that he was going to say it when Jeff was so upset.

"Jeff," he said quietly, sadly. It may have been years, and Mike may have gone through more than a few stages of grief over Jeff, but he'd never wanted Jeff to be sad like this. "Jeff, I'm not mad. I'm fine, seriously. I'm the one who threw them out. It doesn't bother me."

"You shouldn't have even had them! You trusted me with them and I fucking _lost_ them and _gave them back_!"

He was so pathetically miserable that Mike had to crack a smile.

"Jeff. Dude. You think I'm upset about my gross-ass broken teeth? You're fucking _talking_ to me again, voluntarily, like you give a shit that I still exist. That means a hell of a lot more to me than what happened with my, fuck, my fucking medical waste. Our friendship was a lot fucking more than our teeth, man."

He said _friendship_, because he wasn't sure there was a word for what they'd been – a could, a should, a would, a didn't.

A never.

And now, a maybe.

The way Jeff watched him was fragile, tremulous in a way that Jeff Carter should never look – and maybe he never did, when Mike Richards' teeth weren't bringing him to his knees.

"You want to make it up to me?" Mike said. "Then fucking talk to me. Tell me about what you've been up to, how your family's doing – shit, tell me about the goddamn weather. Catch me up on the past four years and maybe give us a chance to be normal fucking friends again. 'Cause like, shit, man, I don't care about teeth, but I care about you. I've fuckin' missed your crazy ass, and if you give a shit about me at all... We both screwed up. But like. I don't have anything better to do."

He smiled a little, as best he could, the awful crooked thing he used to flash girls in Philly when they were kids, until Carts had finally cuffed him over the head and told him it made him look awkward and like he was trying not to wet himself.

But it made Jeff smile, more bashful than Mike had ever seen him when he wasn't, like, playing nice with old ladies in hockey jerseys, and so maybe it wasn't entirely without its uses.

"_'Don't have anything better to do,_' fuck, Richie, you finally empty all the fish out of that lake?"

When the backs of Mike's eyes started to prickle, he told himself it was just relief, because relief was a lot safer than saying it felt like _home_.

"I'm getting close to it," he said.

"Yeah, well if I come back up there I expect the most amazing fucking fish I've ever had in my life."

"Who said you're invited?"

Jeff's smile was smug then, big and shit-eating and very much the Jeff that Mike remembered. "I gotta check on my teeth, don't I? Make sure you're taking care of them."

Mike rolled his eyes for the camera and then spun the lens towards his mantel. "They're right there, you fucking drama queen."

He only saw it for a second, when he spun the phone back around, but for just a moment Jeff's expression was so soft that it made Mike's heart still in his chest.

And then it was gone, Jeff's easy smarm returning, and Mike's heart remembered its normal job again, but that look lingered in his brain longer after their call had ended.

Jeff did come up again before training camp started, this time with Mike's blessing and a bit of forewarning. Mike grilled their fish and they ate on his back deck just the way they used to, just the way they hadn't for years. And when they were done eating, watching the sun start to dip behind the trees, casting a warm, painted glow over the lake, Mike reached into his pocket and pulled out a small pill bottle, tossing it in Jeff's lap.

For a second, Jeff was incensed, comically outraged, face turning redder than the sunset on the water, until he caught Mike's growing smirk and thought to give it a second look.

Mike watched with no small excitement as Jeff squinted at the label, eyebrows going up.

"This is...yours." He cut a quick look between Mike and the bottle, waiting for Mike's nod. "But..."

He held the bottle up in front of his eyes, squinting at its contents. "These aren't the same."

No grown man had the right to sound that sad about teeth.

"They aren't," Mike agreed with a shrug. "The ones you had before are gone. But..."

He weighed his words, wondering which way he could say this that wouldn't come out sounding soft as hell.

After a moment he decided that there wasn't a way to get out of this unscathed and the only way to go was through, so he braced himself and said, "Those are mine, though. My mom took them from my baby book for me. The first and last baby teeth I lost. So..."

He shrugged.

"I know it's not exactly the same, but if you want, I'd like for you to have them."

A pause, and then he tacked on a wry smile. "My mom said you can have them so long as you promise to take care of them."

Mike thought he'd kind of figured out more of this teeth thing, the last few weeks. He expected Jeff to get a little weirdly sincere and emotional about it, because apparently exchanging teeth was a greater declaration to him than Mike had ever known.

He still wasn't expecting Jeff to stand up from his chair, lean down, and pull Mike into a hug. And not just a hockey hug, a slapping, pat-on-the-head, pat-on-the-ass kind of hug. A real one, solid and slow. Tender.

Meaningful.

"I promise," Jeff rumbled in Mike's ear, his chest vibrating with his words. "I promise, I'm gonna keep them safe for the rest of my life."

When he pulled back his eyes were glassy in the way that no teeth deserved.

Mike cracked a smile, patted his shoulder. "Or just as long as you want them."

Jeff smiled too, but there was an emotion behind it that made Mike's heart hurt in the best way. "I'm always gonna want your teeth, Richie."

It wasn't romantic, or sweet, or fucking normal or any other variety of things that a declaration of that weight could have been.

But it meant more to Mike in that moment than any award or medal or Stanley Cup ever had.

A win was a moment, memorialized but fleeting.

Wanting to keep a guy's fucking teeth?

That type of dedication was forever.

Mike's life may have Stopped four years ago, but he didn't need that one anymore.

He had a new one now, and forever sounded kind of nice.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact! Everyone thinks that Jeff Carter lost his teeth when he was high-sticked in the playoffs in 2013, but from the articles I found he said that his front teeth at that point were already a bridge that had fallen out in practice. I couldn't find any record of when/how he ACTUALLY lost his teeth so I assume it was in Philly and that, naturally, he left his teeth in Richie's care.
> 
> I'm [swedishgoaliemafia](https://swedishgoaliemafia.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr.


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